There are hundreds of medieval castles in Spain. This is not an exaggeration — the country has more castles per square kilometre than almost anywhere else in Europe, a legacy of the centuries of conflict that shaped the peninsula. Most of them are either heavily restored and full of tourists, or completely inaccessible, or somewhere in between.
But there is a third category: the ones that are just sort of there. Unlocked, unguarded, not on any tourist circuit, not mentioned in any guidebook. You find them by driving through small towns and looking up, or by following a sign that says "Castillo" with an arrow and seeing where it leads.
The one I want to tell you about is in a village in the province of Cáceres. I'm not going to name it, partly because I don't want it to become a destination, and partly because the pleasure of finding it was in the finding. What I will say is that it dates from the thirteenth century, that it is in a state of magnificent, photogenic decay, and that when I visited on a Tuesday afternoon in October, I was the only person there.
I spent two hours walking through it. The views from the top of the surviving tower were extraordinary — the kind of views that explain immediately why someone chose to build a fortification in exactly that spot. The walls were covered in wildflowers. A pair of kestrels had nested in one of the arrow slits.
The village below had about 200 residents. Nobody seemed particularly interested in the castle. It was just there, the way old things are just there when you live near them long enough. I found this, somehow, more moving than any amount of interpretation panels and audio guides.